Best Selling Books by Karl Raimund Popper

Written in political exile during the Second World War, The Open Society and its Enemies prophesied the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and exposed the fatal flaws of socially engineered political systems.

First Published in 1977. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

These excerpts from the writings of Sir Karl Popper are an outstanding introduction to one of the most controversial of living philosophers, known especially for his devastating criticisms of Plato and Marx and for his uncompromising rejection of inductive reasoning. David Miller, a leading expositor and critic of Popper''s work, has chosen thirty selections that illustrate the profundity and originality of his ideas and their applicability to current intellectual and social problems. Miller''s introduction demonstrates the remarkable unity of Popper''s thought and briefly describes his philosophy of critical rationalism, a philosophy that is distinctive in its emphasis on the way in which we learn through the making and correcting of mistakes. Popper has relentlessly challenged both the authority and the appeal to authority of the most fashionable philosophies of our time. This book of selections from his nontechnical writings on the theory of knowledge, the philosophy of science, metaphysics, and social philosophy is imbued with his emphasis on the role and by reason in exposing and eliminating the errors among them.

Conjectures and Refutations is one of Karl Popper''s most wide-ranging and popular works, notable not only for its acute insight into the way scientific knowledge grows, but also for applying those insights to politics and to history. It provides one of the clearest and most accessible statements of the fundamental idea that guided his work: not only our knowledge, but our aims and our standards, grow through an unending process of trial and error.

A brilliant account of the life of one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. Popper also explains some of the central ideas in his work, making this ideal reading for anyone coming to his life and work for the first time.

Hailed on publication in 1957 as ''probably the only book published this year that will outlive the century'', this is a devastating criticism of the idea that there are fixed laws in history and that human beings are able to predict them.

Realism and the Aim of Science is one of the three volumes of Karl Popper''s Postscript to the Logic of scientific Discovery. The Postscript is the culmination of Popper''s work in the philosophy of physics and a new famous attack on subjectivist approaches to philosophy of science. Realism and the Aim of Science is the first volume of the Postcript. Popper here formulates and explains his non-justificationist theory of knowledge: science aims at true explanatory theories, yet it can never prove, or justify, any theory to be true, not even if is a true theory. Science must continue to question and criticise all its theories, even those that happen to be true. Realism and the Aim of Science presents Popper''s mature statement on scientific knowledge and offers important insights into his thinking on problems of method within science.

First ed. published in 1974 as vol. 2 of The Philosophy of Karl Popper, Open Court, La Salle, Ill. Includes index. Bibliography: p. [240]-247. Omniscience and fallibility -- Childhood memories -- Early influences -- The First World War -- An early philosophic problem: infinity -- My first philosophical failure: the problem of essentialism -- A long digression concerning essentialism: what still divides me from most contemporary philosophers -- A crucial year: Marxism; science and pseudoscience -- Early studies -- A second digression: dogmatic and critical thinking; learning without induction -- Music -- Speculations about the rise of polyphonic music: psychology of discovery or logic of discovery? -- Two kinds of music -- Progressivism in art, especially in music -- Last years at the university -- Theory of knowledge: Logik der Forschung -- Who killed logical positivism? -- Realism and quantum theory -- Objectivity and physics -- Truth; probability; corroboration -- The approaching war; the Jewish problem -- Emigration: England and New Zealand -- Early work in New Zealand -- The open society and The poverty of historicism --Other work in New Zealand -- England: at the London School of Economics and Political Science -- Early work in England -- First visit to the United States. Meeting Einstein -- Problems and theories -- Debates with Schr©·odInger -- Objectivity and criticism -- Induction; deduction; objective truth -- Metaphysical research programmes -- Fighting subjectivism in physics: quantum mechanics and propensity -- Boltzmann and the arrow of time -- The subjectivist theory of entropy -- Darwinism as a metaphysical research programme -- World 3 or the third world -- The body-mind problem and world 3 -- The place of values in a world of facts.

Covering such issues as the aims of science, the role it plays in our civilization, the moral responsibiliby of the scientist, the function of a university, and the choice between reason and revolution, this book defends science and rationality against distortions of its aims and ideals.

First published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This collection of essays not only elucidates the complexity of ancient Greek thought but also reveals Popper''s engagement with Presocratic philosophy and the enlightenment he experienced in his reading of Parmenides.

This book contains two lectures - given in 1988 and 1989 respectively - which belong to Karl Popper''s late work, most of which is still unpublished. The first introduces a new view of causality, based on Popper''s interpretation of quantum theory, yet freed of difficulty. It is a new view of the universe - a view that easily merges with the commonsense view that our will is free. The second lecture gives a glimpse of human knowledge as it evolves from animal knowledge. Both lectures have been expanded by Popper for publication.

A collection of essays that offers striking new insight into the mind of one of the greatest living philosophers. Popper''s subjects range from the beginnings of scientific speculation in Greece to the role of science in the arts.

This selection of Popper''s writings on his main preoccupations towards the end of his life, illuminates his process of working on his theory of science, and indicates his view of the state of the world at the end of the Cold War.

Written in political exile during the Second World War and first published in 1945, Karl Popper''s The Open Society and Its Enemiesis one of the most influential books of the twentieth century. Hailed by Bertrand Russell as a ''vigorous and profound defence of democracy'', its now legendary attack on the philosophies of Plato, Hegel and Marx exposed the dangers inherent in centrally planned political systems. Popper''s highly accessible style, his erudite and lucid explanations of the thought of great philosophers and the recent resurgence of totalitarian regimes around the world are just three of the reasons for the enduring popularity ofThe Open Society and Its Enemies, and for why it demands to be read both today and in years to come. This is the first of two volumes of The Open Society and Its Enemies.

"Bartley and Radnitzky have done the philosophy of knowledge a tremendous service. Scholars now have a superb and up-to-date presentation of the fundamental ideas of evolutionary epistemology." --Philosophical Books

The author proposes an interpretation of physics, and an entire cosmology, which is realist; conjectural; deductivist and objectivist; anti-positivist; and anti-instrumentalist. He stresses understanding; reminding us that our ignorance grows faster than our conjectural knowledge.

Popper warns us against the increasing violence and egoism of our society, which imperil democracy. Popper believed that the philosopher has a duty to intervene in politics and in The Lesson of This Century he utters a clear call to all of us to recognize our responsibilities. We are asked to find solutions to the problems facing our environment, are called upon to prevent violence engendered by our society, and are encouraged to preserve our democratic system while paving the way for global peace.

"This book is timely, as it appears at a point of impasse between philosophy and science. It creates the first link between the philosophy of the self and neurobiology. In dealing with the self, philosophers have so far taken little account of scientific knowledge of the brain; scientists, for their part, have traditionally avoided philosophy in favour of purely material evidence. Eccles (a neurobiologist) and Popper (a philosopher), both believers in dualism and interactionism, consider the existence of consciousness one of the greatest riddles of cosmology. In Part I, Popper discusses the philosophical issue between dualist or even pluralist interactionism on the one side, and materialism and parallelism on the other. There is also a historical review of these issues. In Part II, Eccles examines the mind from the neurological standpoint: the structure of the brain and its functional performance under normal as well as abnormal circumstances, for example when lesions (especially those surgically induced) are present. The result is a radical and intriguing hypothesis on the interaction between mental events and detailed neurological occurrences in the cerebral cortex. Part III, based on twelve recorded conversations, reflects the exciting exchange between the authors as they attempt to come to terms with their conflicting opinions. This part preserves the intimate quality of these dialogues, and shows how some of the authors'' viewpoints changed in the course of these daily discussions."--front flap.

In this long-awaited volume, Jeremy Shearmur collects the most important writings Popper made in the years after The Open Society was first published. Many are published here for the first time.